


the world made up the way you want it

by goodbyechunkylemonmilk



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Afterlife, Canonical Character Death, Child Abuse, Death References, Families of Choice, M/M, References to Abuse, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-02
Updated: 2013-06-02
Packaged: 2017-12-13 18:55:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,625
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/827679
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goodbyechunkylemonmilk/pseuds/goodbyechunkylemonmilk
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Sirius' death in OotP, he finds himself in the afterlife reconciling with his past.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the world made up the way you want it

**Author's Note:**

> References to suicidal thoughts and suicide, child abuse. Mention of Mundungus (so alcoholism).  
> Every time I mention Kreacher in a fic I want to bring up as a disclaimer how offensive and gross an generally alienating everything JKR chose to do with the house elves was. Using it because it’s canon, not because it’s acceptable.

Sirius feels something approaching peace for the first time in years as he falls through the veil, so when he lands, he keeps his eyes shut a moment longer to prolong it, and he's glad he did once he opens them. Grimmauld doesn't look the way it did when he left a few hours ago, which makes the clenching in his heart relax, if only slightly. When he first got to the house last year he relished its disrepair, the dust covering his mother's precious silver and the way all the doors stuck no matter how many oiling spells Molly cast. But now he looks at the well-polished stairs and the umbrella stand that hasn't been chipped by being tripped over time and time again (their parents would never tolerate clumsiness), and this, at least, is something he's lived through, can live through again, for some definition of the word.

James isn't there to greet him on the other side, which really just confirms what he's known for fifteen years: he messed up. He feels like he's been preparing all his life, but when his eyes fall on Regulus, he freezes. Then he looks down at himself, at his gaunt body and the stringy hair falling against his shoulders. "I thought I'd look--"

"Less destroyed?" Regulus smirks, gestures expansively with one soaking wet sleeve. "No, the afterlife has a sense of humor apparently. I mean, it must to bring me back here."

"You saying you don't spend all your time here?”

“I wanted to leave this place behind as much as you did, Sirius.”

“You stayed.” And he's supposed to be over this, is never supposed to have been upset in the first place when he's the one who escaped, who got to live with a normal family and with James. But he had to leave his brother to do it, to survive, and then watch him shrink into himself over the years, powerless to stop it no matter how many letters he wrote, how many meetings he arranged. Still, he's not the one who shrank and he ought to be better than this, but he isn't and he hates himself as he continues, voice shaking, “I asked you to leave with me again and again, but you stayed.”

“Someone had to. They were horrible but they were our parents and I—” Regulus shuts his mouth and his eyes, breathes deep through flared nostrils. “I'm sorry. I think you made the right choice, I just—had to make a different one. It's funny though, isn't it, that you're the one who brought us back here.”

“You could say that. I wouldn't, but you could.” He tries to keep his voice calm, but it trembles and he can't stop himself from crossing his arms against his chest as if that can protect him from what's already happened.

“Sorry.” Regulus finally moves from the entryway, crosses the room and hugs him the way Sirius did to him when they were kids. “I used to be better at this.”

“No, you didn't,” Sirius says, words muffled from where he's stooped slightly to press his face into Regulus' shoulder. “You were just sadder.”

Regulus snorts. “So what, now I'm happy? I've been dead and alone for— How long's it been?”

“I try really hard not to think about it.” He knows, of course, had it down to the day until James died, and even in Azkaban managed to roughly keep track. And he is not, absolutely _not_ going to be the first to cry when Regulus once cried over a worm in their garden, first because he'd killed it and then because neither half would stop wriggling (and then because Sirius stomped on them in a misguided attempt to help).

He's crying by the time they pull apart, wipes his eyes on his sleeves and barely registers that even though Regulus is drenched, his own robes are still dry but for the patch against his wrist. “Bloody hell this is pathetic. I'm meant to be the older brother.”

Regulus freezes for a moment, mouth open and hands clenched at his sides, and Sirius is sure that he was wrong to get his hopes up, that even now they're only inches apart, he'll never have his brother back. But then Regulus looks him up and down and says, “Older is right.” And it's completely stupid, completely forced, and on top of that completely insensitive, but Sirius laughs.

No one's been like this around him in years, completely at ease. Even the people insulting him and condescending to him seemed oddly frightened like he might go off at any moment. The closest he's come to a normal relationship is Snape, so he starts laughing and doesn't manage to stop until finally he has to sit down and he can't tell whether he's crying from misery or amusement.

Finally when he's calmed he looks up at Regulus again. “It's nice to see you.”

“You too.” He smiles, but it's gone so quickly that Sirius isn't sure it counts. “I assume you've spoken to Potter already?”

“No. Just you.” Sirius tries to stop himself from sounding bitter when he knows it will be taken the wrong way, and he must manage because Regulus' face lights up.

“Yeah? I'm first?”

“Apparently.” There's a lot he knows he ought to say here, that it's never been a competition and he doesn't love James more anyway, that if he did have to choose he doesn't know what he'd do but Regulus is the one who needs him and James hates him, which makes his decision well enough. But that's all too much to think about, so he says instead, “You could have come to me, you know. I would have helped you, hidden you, fought for you.” And it ought not be easier to talk about this when it's all his fault—Regulus dying so young, standing before him not even nineteen—but auto-flagellation comes easy to him by now.

“I know. I knew then and I know now.” Regulus mutters as if Sirius is a nagging parent harping on about his grades, “You certainly told me often enough.”

“So why didn't you?”

“I just—” He shrugs. “Didn't. It was easier to—”

“Die?” Sirius demands, knowing as he does that he's being too harsh and more than a bit hypocritical.

“I was going to say 'not put anyone else in danger,' but-- Look, it wasn't worth it. You can't hide from Voldemort for long. He'd have caught me and found out and then I'd be dead for no reason, along with anyone who tried to help me. And besides, maybe I was tired.”

“Tired?” Sirius repeats, like he's never had the thought himself, like he's not still wondering what the duel with Bellatrix would have been like if he'd had any desire to go back to his life.

“Don't try to pretend you don't know after the times I had to talk you down. I'm not meant to believe you died a totally natural death after everything that's happened, am I?”

“Forget about me, what happened to you? I did my best to find out after you were gone, but all I got was that you'd stopped showing up to meetings well before you died and no one from the Order did it.”

“It's a long story.”

“We've got time, haven't we?”

Regulus looks him over for agonizingly silent minutes on end. Then, “Do you think I'm a coward? Because it seemed right heroic to me at first, what I did, and I thought I'd finally have something to show up Potter but since I've been here I've realized I was just trying to escape.”

“Of course I don't.” Regulus doesn't look convinced, so Sirius repeats, “I _don't_. You stayed here and suffered through our family when I ran away.”

“And that was stupid.”

“I spent seven years in Gryffindor and as far as I can tell, that's what bravery is, just utter stupidity. They give themselves too much credit, it's not nearly as noble as all that, just people without a healthy sense of self-preservation, which seems like a pretty good match for us. Whatever you want to call it, I've always thought you were strong.” He shrugs and adds like it's nothing, “You've dealt with more than James.”

Regulus looks away like he can hide his smile, and it's this expression that leaves Sirius so unprepared for the shaky tone in which he begins his story. “I was being punished, I think. You used to call me soft and I was; I'd like to idealize it as a moral stance but I was just weak, always hung back on missions and didn't do anything until I had to, to defend myself and sometimes not even then. They told me Voldemort wanted Kreacher for something—even then he didn't say it to me directly. It was Bellatrix, actually, who explained the _honor_ to me when I hesitated. The family was going downhill by then, of course, with Father dead and Mother...the way she was toward the end. Kreacher was our only elf and I'm sure he meant to leave us without.

“I sent Kreacher but I told him to come back no matter what, and he did. Weak and poisoned, but he came back. He explained it all to me, that Voldemort was trying to make himself immortal, and I was horrified but mostly I was just angry. Once you left—don't look like that I've never blamed you—Kreacher was the only one I had in the house and we got close.” Sirius snorts and fights down the urge to say anything. “Oh, be quiet. Mother and Father poisoned him against you, but also you were just a prat. You don't get to complain.

“I sacrificed myself to stop Voldemort. Very noble and all, except I was just looking for a way out.”

“At least you didn't spend a year here with your only contributions being some chores fifteen-year-olds could and diddo just as well.” It's a stupid thing to be jealous of, but his death was a glorified trip down some stairs and Regulus has an actual story, something other than “I don't know if I was overly confident or just wanted to die that badly.”

Time passes strangely here, or doesn't pass, or passes too fast to track, so Sirius doesn't know exactly how long he fools himself into thinking that this will be enough, that he will be able to exist in this limbo where he doesn't know for sure whether James hates him. And he _must_ hate him, absolutely has to, but it's not enough.

He and Regulus have lapsed into comfortable silence, lying next to each other in his bed like they're children again, when he brings it up. “Come with me.”

And Regulus realizes immediately what he's saying, has probably been thinking about it about almost as much. “Or we could stay here.”

“I need to see him, Reg. Like I needed to see you. And I need you to come.”

“Why, so I can watch your loving reunion?”

“Because I can't do it alone. You were gone by the time it all happened, but I messed up. Bad. I might as well have killed him myself. He must hate me, and I deserve it.”

Regulus props himself up on his elbow to look at Sirius. He smiles, and Sirius has to fight back resentment over how casual he can be about this. “You're kind of difficult to hate, take it from me.”

Sirius snorts, thinking of Molly, and Dumbledore's constant chastising, and the way his only ally was Mundungus whenever he came out of his drunken stupors. “Not for everyone back there. Even the ones on my side.”

“No, well.” Regulus laughs. “I imagine you're pretty easy to hate, but once you worm your way into someone's good graces, you're impossible to let go of. I know Potter, and you, well enough to know there's no way he could possibly hate you.”

And there's no response to that, really, because he wants to believe it but can't, no response except, repeated and more desperate than before, “Come with me.”

“You ought to learn to say please.” Sirius' face turns red at the thought, because he has been debased and humiliated and saying please to Regulus isn't nearly the same, but logic has never been his strong suit. “It was bad then? The way they treated you? You didn't have this much trouble with it before.”

“Will you come?”

“Fine. He has a wife of sorts, doesn't he? I'll talk to her while you two are busy...” He waves his hand like it doesn't bother him, like it's not worth mentioning. “Reminiscing.”

The world outside the front door looks nothing like he remembers, though he considers the possibility that that doesn't make it inaccurate. “How do I know where to go then?”

“You ought to feel something, I don't know. This isn't my journey.” But Regulus turns his head in the direction Sirius feels a tug toward when he focuses, and they move almost in unison toward a house on their left.

Lily opens the door when he knocks, and he's happy to see her doing well, but he can't help the disappointment he feels, which is only slightly alleviated when the first thing she does is turn and yell James' name up the steps, even before she hugs him. “He's pouting about something, though I don't know what; I stopped listening back when we were still alive, honestly. This is probably why he's been so antsy lately, he must have been able to feel you coming.” She turns suddenly to Regulus. “Did you get that too?”

“What?” He startles, antsy like he's been assuming no one will speak to him the entire time he's here, allowing him to stand forgotten in a corner and brood.

“The anticipation.”

“Oh. Yes.” This must please her, because she nods and turns back to Sirius.

“I'm assuming I ought to be comfortable talking to him because there's no way you'd be stupid enough to bring an unrepentant Death Eater into my home, and he's spent some of his time here reconsidering his actions, and not just because he got scared.”

“He's on our side.” Out of the corner of his eye, Sirius sees Regulus wince. “Let's not talk about it now. I remembered you nicer, Evans. I guess I was influenced by all the rosy eulogies I read about in my prison cell.”

“Oh, you do not think you're going to be able to guilt me into anything, do you?” She smirks, but squeezes his shoulder when she steps aside to let them in. Then, and he can't imagine this is anything but intentional to keep him from thinking she's gone soft, she screams for James again right when his ear is closest to her mouth.

He's halfway through a sarcastic comment when James comes clattering down the stairs. He looks young and happy and free, the way Sirius imagined, the way Sirius imagined himself sometimes, only half-conscious on the rare nights he didn't wake up panting and scared, when he managed to not quite forget.

Sirius freezes just like he did with Regulus because there is nothing that seems like enough for these people he has let down so badly. But James has always been aggressive, has always been imbued with a doubt-free sense of confidence, so he makes the first move, closes the distance between them and pulls Sirius into a kiss.

“Bloody hell. I was beginning to think you were immortal or something awful like that.” He smiles, easy and unforced, and pulls Sirius in from the doorway with Regulus trailing along behind them.

“So how's this work then?” Sirius asks, looking at James, who looks like he's just walked out of the picture still hanging on Sirius' bedroom wall; at Lily, maybe a little different from when she died; at Regulus, who's young enough to match James but looked, when they met, like he'd been dragged under a cursed lake only seconds before. He carefully doesn't look down at himself, at his body that must be twice James' age by now, even if they're the same mentally. “Ages, appearances, who decides?”

“We think it's all, you know, very symbolic.” James grins. “Coming to terms with your life, reconciling with the people you care about, all that rot.”

“He's never looked any age but this one; I suppose some people just aren't very complex. I changed a bit after I spoke to my parents about Petunia and everything that went wrong there, but otherwise, nothing.”

“And you've just been here since then?” Sirius tries to ignore the jealousy flaring up in his chest because James deserves better than that.

“I spent some time with my parents a while back, but other than that, yes, we've been waiting together.” James leans in and says in a mock whisper that's somehow louder than his normal voice, “I don't think she's got any other friends.”

“Maybe mine are just better at keeping themselves alive,” she responds snappishly, then softens so dramatically her upper lip even quivers. “Besides, we all know my best friend of six years called me a mudblood after _you_ pushed him, so maybe you ought to be a bit more sensitive.”

“Oh, please. If Azkaban didn't work on you, how is losing Snivellus of all people meant to work on us?” After Sirius says it, he's pleased and little embarrassed at how easy it is to link himself with James again, as if none of the intermediary years ever happened.

“Fair.” She looks between them and says exaggeratedly loud, “I'm going to grab myself something to eat.” Regulus follows her into the kitchen without being prompted, and later Sirius will have to revisit his attempts to get him and James to bond, but for now he's grateful.

“Bring me some tea!” James calls after them.

“I'm neither your maid nor your mother, Potter. I'm not even your wife now there's no one to pretend for.” There's none of the fire they used to have, what people mistook for passion, and he can't decide whether they seem bored or peaceful.

“Why don't either of you hate me?” Sirius asks, pitching his voice low so it won't be audible in the kitchen, because even though he's asked about both of them, he means James and doesn't think it's something that needs to be overheard.

James turns to him with a look of shock that is theatrical enough to be fake, but, and he _remembers_ this it all comes back easy like it never left, that's always been James preferred method of emoting. “Why would we hate you? And you don't have to whisper, Lily just said she was getting tea as an excuse to give us privacy, they're probably upstairs. Now tell me, why would we—why would _I_ hate you?”

“I got you _killed_ I orphaned your son I—” He tries to look away, over James' shoulder, but James climbs fully on the couch, kneeling, so he's directly in Sirius' line of sight. “Having Peter as the Secret Keeper was my idea so it's my fault.”

James squints at him for a moment. “Oh, yeah.”

“You didn't forget?”

“It wasn't important.”

“It's how you died!” He loses control of his voice then, almost shouts, but James doesn't flinch. He almost loses control because this explains all of it, why they let him in, why James has been smiling at him, but now that Sirius has gone and reminded him, it's sure to all be over.

“I think I'd forgotten about Peter too, to tell you the truth. Not totally, you understand, but.” James shrugs. “I wasn't that interested in other people even when they were around me all the time; I certainly wasn't going to start once I'd died. Anyway, I'm not mad at you because it wasn't your fault. We all thought it was a good idea.”

“Right, _my_ idea.”

“You're not the one who betrayed me. You'd have died for me. Besides, it hasn't been bad here. Bit boring, but Evans is mostly decent company. I'm the one who should feel bad. I would have come back if I'd known." James looks at him solemnly, then adds, as if Sirius could possibly need clarification,as if Sirius has not been thinking about this for fifteen years, "As a ghost, I mean. I could have explained.” Sirius does not, all things considered, have much left in the way of dignity by now, but he can at least lay claim to a rather unhealthy amount of pride, and that is enough, just barely, to stop him from asking _why_ James didn't come back. He must have some idea, though, what Sirius is thinking, because he continues, “But I didn't think you'd be long anyway." His words take a while to sink in, but when they do, Sirius laughs, loud and abrupt. "I wouldn't have lasted, if it were the other way around."

"Well." There was a time when Sirius didn't think he would either, even before Harry and the prophecy and the war, but he doesn't know how to explain the way living became a kind of penance, so he settles for, "I didn't want to abandon your son," which is at least partially true.

“I missed you,” James says, soft like Sirius hasn't heard in over a decade. “Time doesn't move here like it does there, but it was too long. Being here, you lose a lot, memories that aren't important, people you weren't close to. You lose a lot here, but I never once lost you.”


End file.
